Lockers(储物柜)have been the symbol of American high school for decades. But walk down any hallway of the new Germantown High School in Madison County, Mississippi, and you won't spot a single locker.

    New technology such as e-books, interactive(互动的)assignments and Web-based learning is making lockers in

    American high school a thing of the past.

    Officials from schools that have listed several benefits: less noise, less delay and an increased sense of safety.

    “It's all to create an environment that's student-friendly”, said Ronnie McGehee, chief official of the Madison County School District.

    Getting rid of lockers can also cut hundreds of thousands in construction costs. Madison County saved $200,000 by not including lockers in the new high school, McGehee said.

    It is also believed that removing lockers could help prevent school violence. ”Lockers give kids a place to hide things”, said Mike Nelson, founder of a safety- training group. Nelson believes that some school shootings and other incidents could have been prevented if there had been no lockers.

    However, Andrew Booth, a 10th-grader at Gemantown High, said there are some disadvantages of not having a locker. “It can make your book bag really heavy”, he said. The 16-year-old has four textbooks “plus notebooks and a binder(活页夹)” to carry to school each day.

    He said some teachers have shelves at the back of the classroom on which students can leave their bags. Others provide an extra set of textbooks in the classroom, so students don't have to carry books from home.

    New York architect Peter Lippman said schools will have to address such concerns and find ways to give students a “sense of space” “If you are carrying books around, it does limit your flexibility in the classrooms,” he said.

Lippman said he would like to see schools starting to use the new free space to provide less structured learning opportunities for students, including gathering areas and learning centers. “If you think about a school with just rows of lockers-there's nowhere for learning opportunities in that”, he said.

    Toronto is reminding citizens this month what exactly can and can't go into the blue bins an you may be surprised at what can't be recycled. As it turns out the takeout coffee cups you've been throwing into the recycling actually have to go in the garbage.

    The city's “recycle right” web explains that food left after a meal, woven (编织的) cloth, old VHS tapes and other things have been turning up in blue bins, where they don't belong.

    According to the city, about 45,000 tunes of garbage was mistakenly put into recycling bins last year alone.

    Among those things are the takeout coffee and tea cups we get while were on the go. The city says that because those paper cups are lined with plastic or wax they can't be recycled. The black plastic coffee lids (盖子) also can't go in the blue bin, although non-black plastic lids can be recycled.

    Emily Alfred, senior campaigner with the Toronto Environmental Alliance, said, “Millions of cups are used in Toronto every year and people are taking these out and putting them in the wrong bin.”

    When paper coffee cups are thrown in with the recycling. Alfred said, they produce a harmful effect on the system.

    “They can't separate the plastic and paper in a typical paper recycling center,” Alfred said, “so it just causes pollution of the recycling process, and it causes lower-quality paper if it does get recycled.”

    “New regulations passed last month call for changes to be rolled out over the next few years regarding what products companies can sell,” Alfred said. Her organization will be pushing for more producer responsibility laws, which call on companies that design and make products to take on the responsibility of recycling them.

    For now, consumers can consider carrying their own reusable coffee cups while they are on the go, ask for a ceramic mug (陶瓷杯) if they plan to consume their drink in the cafe, and support their local government officials if they have put efforts into changing recycling or producer responsibility laws.

    Alfred said, “I think people can change their habits easily if they understand what to do.”

    After opening the world's first commercial Direct Air Capture plant（直接空气捕集工厂）designed to pull CO₂ out of the air, Swiss company Climeworks is now trying to create the world's first “negative emission（负排放）” power plant.

    An international team of scientists has been working on a way to turn captured CO₂ into minerals. The project is called CarFix. Experts capture the gas, put it into water and send it to more than 700 meters underground. There the CO₂ on contact with a special kind of rock forms into a mineral.

    “Our results show that between 95 and 98 percent of the CO₂, sent underground was mineralized over the period of less than two years, which is amazingly fast,” says lead author of the CarFix project, Dr. Juerg Matter. Before this discovery it was thought that this mineralization could take hundreds to thousands of years.

    The DAC technology can collect CO₂ from the atmosphere and then store it underground or sell it to business needing the gas. For example, customers can use it in drinks. And the first plant in Zurich is supplying the captured CO₂ to a nearby greenhouse to “feed” vegetables. By using the company's CO₂ the customers can reduce their carbon mission as well as lower their dependence on energy.

    A 2015 study suggested that before the CarFix project, experts could collect CO₂, but they didn't have a large-scale（大规模的）method to safely treat it.

    Combining Climeworks' DAC technology with the CarFix mineralization process they will be able to create a system. This system doesn't put additional carbon back into the atmosphere. Actually it is carbon negative.

    “The economic cost of applying this kind of carbon capture technology on a large-scale is not particularly practical now, but for the first time we are seeing a realistic and effective system,” says Christoph Gebald CEO of Climeworks.

    Sports can help us a lot. Taking exercises can make us strong. In collective（集体的）sports like basketball, volleyball or football, we will learn the importance of cooperation(合作). And sports can also help us relax after work or study.

    However, as the saying goes, "there are two sides of everything." Sometimes we may hurt other players or ourselves if we are not careful enough when participating(参加) in sports activities. What's more, too much or hard practice can be bad for our health.

    Sports can make us healthy both physically and psychologically(心理地). It is also a good way for people to know each other and can improve friendship between people. So long as we are careful enough, sports can do us nothing but good.

    Wondering what to see and do in India in November? November is an excellent month to visit India. Here are the best festivals in November, 2018 in India.

    International Yoga and Music Festival

    Organized by Nada Yoga School every year since 2008, the International Yoga and Music Festival features 50 of the best professional yoga teachers Ayurvedic（印度草药按摩）doctors， dancers, musicians, and philosophers from Rishikesh and abroad. Free classes and lectures are held with topics including yoga, Ayurveda, philosophy, and Indian classical music. There's an Indian classical music concert in the evenings as well.

    Time: November 1-7, 2018. Location: Rishikesh, Uttarakhand.

    Wangala Festival

    Also known as the 100 Drum Wangala Festival this is the biggest harvest festival of Meghalaya's Garo tribe in northeast India. Held in honor of the Sun God of fertility, the festival marks the end of the seeding season and agricultural year. It's celebrated by the beating of drums, blowing horns, and traditional dancing.

    Time: November 6, 2018. Location: Garo Hills, Meghalaya. Bandra Wine Festival

Being popular with local people for six years, the Bandra Wine Festival is a fun opportunity to sample the best wines in India. In addition to tasting wine, there are market stalls, food stalls, live music in the evenings, and dancing.

    Time: November 7-8, 2018.

    Location: D'Monte Park, Bandra West, Mumbai.

    Pushkar Balloon Festival

    The International Hot Air Ballooning Festival is an added attraction at the Pushkar Camel Fair. Similar to the Taj Balloon Festival in Agra, it's hosted by Sky Waltz, and features hot air balloons from around the world and a Night Glow Music Concert. Accommodation and balloon flight packages are offered to visitors.

    Time: November 21-23, 2018. Location: Pushkar, Rajasthan.

    I was asked by a reader recently why so many animals seem to have pink ears, when their bodies are all different colours? The truth is that most animals actually don't have pink ears. Let us explain.

    Near the equator (赤道), where the climate is hot, animals are likely to have darker skin, including on their ears. Think of the African elephant, which has quite dark ears. In colder climates, skin colour is usually lighter and often pink.

    Why is skin colour different in different climates？Skin pigmentation, which is what gives skin its colour, can protect against sunburn and skin cancer (癌症). When animals live in colder parts of the world, they don't need it as much to survive. Light-coloured skin also helps animals stay warmer because it reduces heat loss, which is useful if you're in a colder climate.

    For most animals, the colour of their fur or other body covering has generally developed as camouflage. That allows animals to mix into the background and avoid being eaten, or for predators (捕食者) to remain hidden during hunting. One example is the sandy-coloured coat of the desert fennec fox, which uses camouflage for both hunting and hiding.

    By the way, in many animals, ears come in many different shapes and sizes. For example, in bats, the serval (a type of African wildcat) and the fennec fox, the ears are large compared to their body size—this helps them hear better because it allows them to sense more sound waves. Naked mole-rats have tiny ears because they need to dig a lot. Big ears would get in the way. The other downside of big ears is that you can lose a lot of body heat. That's why animals that live in really cold places, like the Arctic fox, have quite small ears.